英語聽書《白鯨記》第8期

rather weary for me, when I struck my foot againstthe flinty projections, because from hard,

remorseless service the soles of my boots were in amost miserable plight.

Too expensive and jolly,

again thought I, pausing one moment to watch thebroad glare in the street, and hear the sounds of thetinkling glasses within.

But go on, Ishmael, said I at last; don't you hear?

get away from before the door; your patched bootsare stopping the way.

So on I went. I now by instinct followed the streets that took me waterward, for there,doubtless, were the cheapest, if not the cheeriest inns.

Such dreary streets! blocks of blackness, not houses, on either hand, and here and there acandle,

like a candle moving about in a tomb.

At this hour of the night, of the last day of the week, that quarter of the town proved all butdeserted.

But presently I came to a smoky light proceeding from a low, wide building, the door of whichstood invitingly open.

It had a careless look, as if it were meant for the uses of the public; so, entering, the firstthing I did was to stumble over an ash-box in the porch. Ha!

thought I, ha, as the flying particles almost choked me, are these ashes from that destroyedcity,

Gomorrah? But "The Crossed Harpoons," and "The Sword-Fish?"this, then must needs be thesign of "The Trap."

However, I picked myself up and hearing a loud voice within,

pushed on and opened a second, interior door.

It seemed the great Black Parliament sitting in Tophet. A hundred black faces turned round intheir rows to peer;

and beyond, a black Angel of Doom was beating a book in a pulpit. It was a negro church; andthe preacher's text was about the blackness of darkness,

and the weeping and wailing and teeth-gnashing there. Ha, Ishmael, muttered I, backing out,Wretched entertainment at the sign of 'The Trap!'

Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of light not far from the docks,

and heard a forlorn creaking in the air; and looking up, saw a swinging sign over the door with awhite painting upon it,

faintly representing a tall straight jet of misty spray,

and these words underneath"The Spouter Inn:Peter Coffin."

Coffin?Spouter?Rather ominous in that particular connexion,

thought I. But it is a common name in Nantucket, they say,

and I suppose this Peter here is an emigrant from there.

As the light looked so dim, and the place, for the time, looked quiet enough,

and the dilapidated little wooden house itself looked as if it might have been carted here fromthe ruins of some burnt district,

and as the swinging sign had a poverty-stricken sort of creak to it, I thought that here was thevery spot for cheap lodgings, and the best of pea coffee.

It was a queer sort of place a gable-ended old house, one side palsied as it were, and leaningover sadly.